Bishop John Pritchard says the Church of England’s commitment is still ‘to educate poor children throughout the land’.
Photograph: Christian Sinibaldi

The Church of England, it is often said, is a broad church. You can't get broader than John Pritchard, Bishop of Oxford and chair of the church's board of education since January 2011. When he went up to Oxford University, he joined the Conservative and Labour parties simultaneously, though today, he admits, quietly and a little grudgingly, to being "on the left". In ecclesiastical terms, he is said to be an "open evangelical" which would mean, very loosely, that he is traditional in doctrine but liberal in political and social matters, including the ordination of women as bishops. He prefers, however, to resist even that label, perhaps understandably, since one clergyman described an open evangelical to me as "a bigot who wants a nicer title". Pritchard says: "I am a Christian of the centre, the generous centre".

The right man, you may think, to negotiate the turbulent currents of the education system, in which Pritchard plays a key role. Church schools educate about a million children, including nearly 19% of English primary-age pupils in state-funded schools and 6% of secondary pupils. What is the point of CofE schools? On this, Pritchard is clear. Their mission is not, as he once put it, "to collect nice Christians into safe places", still less to fill the pews with aspirant parents. The church set up schools two centuries ago, he says, "to educate poor children throughout the land". That remains its commitment.

If so, it has been making a poor fist of it. This month, a Guardian analysis showed that 63.5% of the CofE's primary schools and 40% of its secondary schools have fewer children on free school meals than the average for non-religious schools in their neighbourhoods. Pritchard does not dispute the figures, or try to explain them away. "I am sorry that sometimes our commitment isn't working out as we would want," he says. He points out that, in more than half the schools (voluntary-controlled), admissions are determined by local authorities, not the church. In the others (voluntary-aided), power over admissions lies with school governors, of whom the church has a majority, appointed by the local diocese. "We don't control them," says Pritchard. "We keep banging away. I have discussions with heads and governors." So the governors and the 43 dioceses don't share his commitment? "There are pressures on them. They have to balance various factors. I don't envy them having to make these decisions."

Last year, the church issued new advice on admissions, recommending that only attendance at worship should count; points systems that favour children whose parents are heavily involved in church activities should "ideally" be phased out. The advice stated baldly that there should be "bias in favour of the disadvantaged" and, slipping into language that no mainstream politician would now dream of using, added that the church should "change the structures of oppression and injustice". It came too late to affect last autumn's admissions and, therefore, the Guardian's figures. Would Pritchard expect those figures to change in future? "I would, but it will be a process. We have to educate ourselves."

Before launching the advice, he said in an interview that no more than 10% of church school places should be reserved for Anglicans. Is that still the aim? "Quoting figures is a dangerous game and I won't get into that now," he says. "I was trying to restate our commitment to serve the whole community, including those of other faiths and no faith. We are not a club that exists only for its members. At the same time, we can't do our best for children unless we are distinctively Christian."

How does Christianity make schools better? Here, the bishop is at his most broad and inclusive. "I know so many good state schools that have the same commitment as we do to high moral standards. What we offer is a kind of rooting in a distinctive narrative. Those roots, in the Christian framework of western Europe, are profound. In church schools, values are lived out in a particularly conscious way and they can help children to deal with difficulty, conflict, bereavement and so on. To pluck values out of a common humanity works for so long, but I have an anxiety about whether they'll work two generations down."

Pritchard was born in 1948 in Salford, the son of a clergyman. He did not intend to enter the church because "I wanted to earn more money and see my children more than my father did". He studied law at Oxford where "my faith was a nominal one; the idea of God was just out there on my horizon".

Then came what he calls "a Copernican revolution" which put faith at the centre of his life. "I met Christians to whom the reality of God directed their course. They seemed to have a zest, an integrity, an enjoyment of life, an openness to people. So I started going to church and found a faith that was intellectually credible and emotionally satisfying. It makes sense of more things more of the time than any other approach to life I've found." This is said with evident sincerity, in that gentle, slightly hypnotic voice that clergy often use.

Pritchard says he has had "a royal flush" of church jobs — city centre curate, rural diocese youth officer, county town vicar, theological college principal, archdeacon of Canterbury and suffragan (assistant) Bishop of Jarrow – all of which occurred by "providential accident". He had no idea he would become Bishop of Oxford – "I kept looking at the Church Times wondering who it would be" – until he got a letter from the PM, which he first thought was a tax demand. Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, asked him during a conference to chair the education board as they thundered down a hotel fire escape after two drunks had set off the alarm.

Pritchard has written a dozen books, with titles such as Living Jesus, God Lost and Found, and How to Pray which, he thinks, helped him to get noticed in the right circles. To judge from the two I sampled, he writes elegantly and clearly. But he is not regarded as one of the CofE's more adventurous or original thinkers. "Perfectly pleasant and personable, but typical of the rather dull, managerial types that the church appoints these days," was one verdict.

As if to refute such accusations, the bishop is keen to emphasise that he walks over hot coals (literally: the temperature is 1200C, or six times hotter than you'd have your oven) to raise funds for an Oxford hospice. A year or two back, he supported a Muslim application to broadcast calls to prayer across Oxford, provoking demands for his beheading.

But maybe, in the present climate, a grey bureaucrat is exactly what church schools need. Under New Labour, the CofE set up 45 academies, more than any other single provider. Labour's avowed aim — to rescue failing inner city schools — was in accordance with the church's commitment to the poor, Pritchard says. Now, however, the church has to grapple with the coalition government's more ambitious programme, which encourages successful schools to become academies.

It already has 109 "converter academies". This week, a review by Priscilla Chadwick, former headteacher at a CofE school, will propose that the church should, as Pritchard puts it, "step up a gear", strengthen its school improvement services and offer support not only to its own schools but to academies and free schools of all varieties. So the church will compete with private sector companies such as Ark and E-Act? "There will be an element of competition, yes," says Pritchard. "We've got the brand for producing good educational support services."

So the church believes it is good for schools to become academies? "In some cases, yes, in others, it's inadvisable. The philosophy is that, if you set schools free, people will take ownership and be more motivated. I think it's an open question. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. We are not promoting academies as agents of the government. I want schools to take the decision very seriously and not just be swept along."

Is it a good thing that, in Pritchard's own words, local authorities are withering on the vine? "It's an inevitable thing, given the direction of government policy. There are going to be some losses."

There is a touch of the Rev JC Flannel, Private Eye's caricature of the wishy-washy Anglican vicar, about these answers. But it may be more accurate, as well as kinder, to interpret them as Pritchard's tactful way of saying he doesn't agree with government policies but must make the best of them. The CofE's influence risks dilution as schools opt for academy status and buy in management services from private companies or form federations with other schools. If it is to survive as a significant educational force, it has little alternative but to take on E-Act and other companies. Behind the smile and the platitudes, I suspect Pritchard is a rather deft politician.